tlived, is the want of any idea of composition, or
unity of effect, in the minds of their authors. Men and women seem to
think that there is nothing more to do to make a book of travels, than
to give a transcript of their journals, in which every thing is put
down of _whatever_ importance, provided only it really occurred.
Scenes and adventures, broken wheels and rugged rocks, cataracts and
omelets, lakes and damp beds, thunderstorms and waiters, are huddled
together, without any other thread of connexion than the accidental
and fortuitous one of their having successively come under the notice
of the traveller. What should we say to any other work composed on the
same principle? What if Milton, after the speech of Satan in _Paradise
Lost_, were to treat us to an account of his last dinner; or
Shakspeare, after the scene of the bones in Juliet, were to tell us of
the damp sheets in which he slept last night; or Gibbon, after working
up the enthusiasm of his readers by the account of the storming of
Constantinople by the Crusaders, was to favour us with a digression on
the insolence of the postilions in Roumelia? All the world would see
the folly of this: and yet this is precisely what is constantly done
by travellers, and tolerated by the public, because it is founded on
nature. Founded on nature! Is every thing that is actually true, or
real, fit to be recorded, or worthy of being recounted? Sketches from
nature are admirable things, and are the only foundation for correct
and lasting pictures; but no man would think of interposing a gallery
of paintings with chalk drawings or studies of trees. Correctness,
fidelity, truth, are the only secure bases of eminence in all the arts
of imitation; but the light of genius, the skilful arrangement, the
principles of composition, the selection of topics, are as necessary
in the writer of travels, as in the landscape painter, the historian,
or the epic poet.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] We lately heard of a young man, who had gone through the
examination at Cambridge with distinction, enquiring, "whether the
Greek church _were Christians?_" What sort of a traveller would he
make in the East or Russia?

[3] Lady Londonderry's description of Moscow is the best in the
English language.

[4] We have translated all the passages ourselves. A very good
translation of Humboldt's _Personal Narrative_ was published many
years ago, by Miss H. Williams; but we could not resist the pleasure
of try